JVC Professional Products, division of JVC U.S.A., announced Oregon's Canby School District, a public school district that supports approximately 5,000 K-12 students and is located about 20 miles south of Portland, has installed an IP-based video surveillance network to monitor its facilities. The network supports almost 50 JVC V.Networks IP cameras — a mix of VN-C215V4U fixed mini-dome and VN-V26U brick-style models — as well as four powerful JVC VR-N1600U 16-channel network video recorders (NVRs).JVC Professional Products, division of JVC U.S.A., announced Oregon's Canby School District, a public school district that supports approximately 5,000 K-12 students and is located about 20 miles south of Portland, has installed an IP-based video surveillance network to monitor its facilities. The network supports almost 50 JVC V.Networks IP cameras — a mix of VN-C215V4U fixed mini-dome and VN-V26U brick-style models — as well as four powerful JVC VR-N1600U 16-channel network video recorders (NVRs).

At Canby High School, the district's only public high school, 32 cameras have been installed for strategic monitoring of interior and exterior areas, including entrances, parking lots, hallways and the cafeteria. The campus features five buildings, including centers for fine arts, physical education, and career development. The cameras are triggered by built-in motion detection and record onto two of the 16-channel VR-N1600U NVRs, which can record high-quality M-JPEG or MPEG-4 images.

There are eight cameras located at Ackerman Middle School, which record to a VR-N1600U on site. The fourth NVR is located at the District Office, and it records eight JVC cameras that monitor six elementary schools and a business office.

“We chose the JVC cameras based upon their great picture quality and reputation for reliable operation, especially in low-light and extreme weather conditions,” said Joe Morelock, IT Director for the Canby School District. “Other compelling features included Web-based setup and access, and a JVC app enabling monitoring on an Apple iPhone.”

The remaining ports on the NVR at the District Office are being populated by eight legacy analog cameras that are being modified with IP devices. As a result, these will be monitored by Xprotect IP camera management software from Milestone Systems, which JVC has embedded within its VR-N1600U. “We like Milestone because we are able to manage the view/access rights to all of the cameras from one central server, allowing only one point of entry with multiple access security roles,” Morelock said.

The district has a virtual local area network (VLAN) supported by a fiber optic backbone, which allows authorized personnel to view video data without interfering with regular enterprise data traffic. Technocom, a systems integrator based in Wilsonville, Oregon, designed and installed the Canby School District's camera surveillance system, which came online in time for fall classes. The project included installing Power over Ethernet switches or midspans over existing Category 5e/6 cabling, which provide the power source for the cameras and the transmission vehicle for video data across the network.

While the video cameras can be viewed in real time and monitored 24/7, Canby School administrators prefer to review the recordings to investigate suspicious incidents that have taken place, such as thefts or student skirmishes. School officials may be granted access to monitor all the cameras — or just an individual camera or select portion of the network — using any Web-enabled device. Also, law enforcement agencies can monitor school cameras remotely from their squad cars by tapping into the school district's IP-based Wi-Fi network.

The adoption of camera surveillance was seen as a positive move by the community. “School security has become an extremely important issue and trend,” Morelock said. “The closed-circuit security system was funded as part of a bond issue that voters approved for the construction and renovation of Canby's public schools. The mere presence of these cameras acts as a deterrent as well as an investigative tool that is already serving to keep our schools safer.”

As JVC law enforcement and government customers discovered, the education sector is realizing the lowest cost of ownership with JVC IP video surveillance systems, including no hidden fees and open architecture for integration with a wide variety of third-party applications, from Apple iPhone and BlackBerry wireless phones to video analytics and access control systems. “JVC IP video surveillance systems customers enjoy the lowest cost of ownership in the industry and real open architecture for plug-and-play performance,” said Geoff Anderson, Brand and Marketing Manager for JVC.